A Close- Up Look At People Who Matter : Volunteer, 95, Is a Lesson in Vitality

Harry Gamble sums up his schooling in a simple manner befitting his Midwestern upbringing.

“I was no genius,” said Gamble, as he filed away the tests he had graded at Dixie Canyon Avenue School in Sherman Oaks. “I didn’t like math.”

But with an easygoing attitude, a simple song or a joke at his disposal, Harry Gamble found a place in education 18 years ago, and is staying with it at the age of 95.

“I could come in when I’m not in the best mood, and he cheers me up,” said fifth-grade teacher Cal Caterra.

A volunteer at the school since 1977, Gamble joins classes on their field trips and is included in class pictures, in addition to his other duties.

“It keeps me young,” said Gamble of Studio City, who become a school volunteer after retiring as a letter sorter from the post office. “It’s refreshing me on my math, and it keeps me young. I’d rather do this than sit at home and vegetate.”

With an eighth-grade education that was completed in night school, Gamble has been a horse soldier, a brick mason, a postal worker and an occasional movie extra.

Aside from the volunteer work in which he does paperwork or anything else the teachers need, he is a piece of living history who can tell students how things really were before television--or even car radios.

“I look back and I can’t believe it,” said Gamble, a World War I-era veteran. “That’s a long way back.” He never saw action during the war, but was stationed in Texas in the U.S. Cavalry, when it still had horses.

Gamble is something of a grandfather to students and teachers. His influence in the classroom comes through in an informal relationship growing naturally from his low-key ways, said Laura Freedman, a fifth-grade teacher at Dixie Canyon. “The kids get very attached to him, and they kind of feel protective of him.”

Students talk about how Gamble had a scene in one of the Police Academy movies when he fired a gun into the air. He also was an extra in 1930s-era movies with cowboy actor Tom Mix and Jimmy Cagney.

“He was all business,” Gamble said of Cagney. “He was standoffish.”

Neil Rambaldi, another sometime actor and a teacher at Dixie Canyon, befriended Gamble four years ago. The two share stories about the movie business, but Rambaldi values Gamble because of the sound advice he can offer about life.

Married twice--both his wives died--Gamble has three daughters and is a great-grandfather.

“When I first saw him, I was amazed,” said Rambaldi, who plans to include Gamble in a mural of faculty and staff that will soon go up at the school. “He’s more active than some men who are 60 years old.”

Born in Omaha, Gamble volunteered for the U.S. Army Cavalry during World War I. “I didn’t want the Navy,” Gamble said. “I didn’t like those bell-bottomed pants.”

He said his experience as a horse soldier toughened him and helped him through the rest of his life.

Gamble moved to Los Angeles in 1924 when “the Valley was nothing but chicken coops.” He started working for his uncles in the construction business and became a brick mason.

He joined the post office for 15 years so he could have a retirement pension. His daughter, Marie Maier, was a teacher at Dixie Canyon and suggested he volunteer there to keep busy. He stayed on, even after she retired.

“If he doesn’t have anything to do, he’ll find something,” said Freedman, who added that Gamble felt guilty a few years ago when he cut his volunteer time from five to three days a week to make time for bowling. “I have to slow him down sometimes.”

Nature has slowed him, but only barely. Gamble drove himself to the school until last year when he failed a driving test because of a stiff neck. He keeps going with a sense of humor and an enjoyment of life.

“My life’s been very good,” Gamble said.

“He really is an inspiration,” Freedman said. “It’d be nice if they could bottle what he has.”

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